NATURE AND HER HARMONIES. 
35 
parent. He ran instantly to the old position he had been 
routed from on the back of the neck, and while the roach was 
employed in soothing the smart of the bite, he succeeded in 
enveloping the head from the back in such a way as to pre- 
vent the roach from straightening out again ; and in a little 
while more had him bound in that position, and entirely 
surrounded by the web. 
A few more last agonies and the roach was dead ; for the 
neck, bent forward in this way, exposed a vital part beneath 
the sheath ; and we left the spider quietly luxuriating upon the 
fruits of his weary contest. This battle between brute force and 
subtle sagacity lasted one hour and a half, and if the history of 
Eeason in our Eace can show a more remarkable conquest 
of superior mind over animal strength, we hope the wiles of 
the sagacious victor will not be robbed of their glory by being 
stigmatized as instinctive. 
But the books of Natural History are crowded with ten 
thousand such illustrations ; no just details of the habitude? 
of any form of animal life has been, or can be given, which 
will not furnish such. Though the narrators themselves per- 
sist in naming these acts instinctive^ yet common judgment 
must teach that no possible sense of instinct can be made sat- 
isfactorily to account for them. 
Every day my horse or dog — ^to go no further — ^forced the 
conviction, that this must be so ; that they shared with me, 
to a certain point, reason and emotion. The most eager and 
accurate investigation showed us that the whole argument for 
instinct was based upon error ; that the facts upon which its 
most ingenious defenders formed their strong positions, melted 
into thin air before a close examination, and proved to be 
pedantic whims or mistakes of old Avriters, perpetuated by 
the careless ignorance of modern bookmakers. 
Since such men as Humboldt, Cuvier and Audubon 
have taught the world how the meaning of the sublime 
pages of the living revelation was to be arrived at — have 
forced upon their fellows a realization of the astounding 
